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Seven Years of KDE Celebrated
Ashcrow writes "Almost exactly 7 years ago, Matthias Ettrich announced the start of a new desktop environment, originally called Kool Desktop Environment. Check out LinuxFrench's article (English translation) and the news at Dot KDE. Thanks to the KDE Team for a great 7 years!"
at least it wasn't "kewl d3skt0p env."
though sometimes when seeing the latest junk for karumba I start to wonder..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
In 7 years they have created a wonderful desktop. For some years now we have olny used Linux at home and at office, and my wife (designer) and my son (7 years old) use it comfortably thanks to KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla et al.
Thanks for a wonderful product, and for demonstrating that a holy war (QT license, QT vs GTK, KDE vs Gnome, etc) should not deminish your efforts.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
I really had to install Wine sometimes just to play solitair, what an overhead!
So now the real reasoning behind KDE is revealed: To build a non-windows solitaire device.
Kongratulations to the KDE development team. I kan hardly believe that it has been seven years for this krazy and kool environment for linux. There's gno way that Gnome kan katch up with your konstant innovations in application naming! Gnow that I think about it, Gnome's gnot even kapable of kashing in on single-letter usage they way KDE kan! Keep the gnew stuff koming!
Around 1999 I had for a few years been experimenting with Linux but hadn't really ever made the switch for more than a week or two, due to lacking real desktop usability. I discovered Slackware and KDE almost in the same heartbeat and converted....and stuck, finally. KDE was the power behind keeping me on Linux and off Windows. Now I have a great desktop that I use every day for hours on end and love every minute of it.
Good job, KDE, and keep going. Gnome? Don't you boys give up, either, because it gives KDE motivation to keep churning out quality. However, you should buy them a beer or two because they've done some fine work for the *nix world, no matter which side of the fence you like to sit on.
Blog,Twitter
Once again, GNOME is behind KDE by a year. No matter how much effort developers put into GNOME, it well never catch KDE in the annivesary department.
You're not way off. You're not spot-on either. Fact is, you make your own choices, and that's a good thing. Personally, I prefer KDE, but I probably know as many, if not more, people who use the Gnome. (This could be because most geeks I know, I know through Uni, which insists on the Gnome, though switching to KDE is a matter of issuing a single command.
My reasons for KDE are first and foremost its configurability. I can set shortcut keys in any native KDE application and for the system as a whole to do what I want it to do. I find that the integration is slightly better for the things that I use, but that all depends on what you do use and what your priorities are.
You'll hear a lot of people flaming KDE. The thing I hear most often is that it is too Windows-like. My response to this is that you can configure it to act very much like a number of different environments, and I fail to see how this is a bad thing, especially given that Windows have made a few sane user interface design decisions (though they have also made some really poor ones in later years, and the underlying structure is helplessly flawed).
A lot of the bucketings that KDE cops are due to experiences with earlier versions, and indeed they were pretty sad, but some Gnome-users that have seen my setup of KDE have been impressed to the point where they went ahead and downloaded it. It really has come a long way, and I'm amazed to see the rate at which it has been improving just over the last few months.
So Kongratulations to KDE. Have some Kake.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
["KDE Sucks! GNOME rules!" (reverse, repeat)] (reverse, repeat)
;)
Both of these projects are so good now, it's great while browsing to run into comments occasionally (going back years) asserting that one or the other would cease to be, or that the presence of both in the world of free / Free software was harmful, because it mean duplication of effort, dilution of attention, etc.
Ha!
Hari Seldon *must* have been involved, to see how much these allegedly self-motivated projects catalyze each other.
However much you like either one, note that KDE now has integrated CD (and DVD!) burning software -- IMO on par with anything I've seen on the commerical side (Nero, etc) whereas before I prefered GnomeToaster to anything else, and GNOME now has a good file-chooser (which had been one of my least favorite points about GNOME apps).
Meanwhile, with the right libraries on your system, the Virtucon-backed fluxbox gives you access to the best of both worlds
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
There was an interesting interview with Matthias Ettrich, done in 1998, and available here.
:-)
Amazing to see how KDE grew since then, and a good reminder of all these (past) issues with Qt, and the QtMozilla huge hack...
And by the way, is this "KEmacs" thing a reality somewhere?
Everytime KDE is mentioned, gnome advocates try and convince me why is GNOME is better, when it is NOT! Here is a detailed description WHY GNOME SUCKS KDE RULES!
1) The file dialog.
KDE 0.x ALPHAs had a better file dialog than gnome! Today, the KDE one is the best file dialgog in existance, with influence from all desktops.
2) More apps!
KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.
3) Configureable as hell.
The KDE control center has loads of knobs/dials/sliders and boxes to fiddle with, yet keeps things elegent. In gnome, half the options don't exisit and you are rudley told "use gconf-editor n00b by gnome zealots" (not joking about this, telling the truth gets you a -1, troll and footnotes).
4) I-kandy!
The Kde eye candy is really powerful, with styles such as dotNEt, mosfet liquid, kermamik, Crystal and more. Looking at art.gnome.org reveals the same old theme in different colours. Since gnome dosen't provide a colour changing dialog for its widgets most "themes" are just colour changes. The Crystal from CVS is an Aqua killer, your eyes will want to love it.
5) Its development framework rocks.
Take a good look at kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt and see why KDE is a programmer's dream. Modern c++, wonderful IDE, powerful command line scripting. Gnome gives you obsolete c, with a bunch of kludge libraries such as glib, Orbit, bonobo to hack together a application.
6)The defacto choice on Linux. All major Distributions support it by default. This means Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, ArkLinux, Jamd, Lindows, Slackware, Knoppix, Gentoo and more. How many gnome ones can you mention (Redhat, sure if you like using server distros as your desktop Debian, nope thats the old 1.4 branch Gnoppix, a retarded knoppix rip off.) Most distributions offer gnome as an unsupported alternative.
Also, the only reason why gnome was created in the first place is null and void. Now that Novell has taken over Ximain you can expect VENDOR lock in. Want groupware for linux? Thats $300 a seat.
Get the new Mandrake 9.2 and see the Quality of KDE vs the Sorry state of Gnome 2.4 (and, they STILL haven't fixed that ****ing file dialog), not to mention they REMOVED ALL THE FEATURES. Gnome 2.2 is probably the only gnome version remotley close to kde, that is, KDE 2.0, not the KDE 3.2. I tried the "brokenboring" alpha of it and when it is released this december it will finally put Gnome out of it's misery and kill it off the Linux desktop.
I switched over to KDE from Gnome about 2 months ago after using Gnome since 1.4ish (and I used 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4).
I like KDE better. That's really all I can say. Gnome isn't bad, but I spent too much time wondering if Gnome was ever going to get polished. That and Nautilus just sucks.
When I was using Windows I used Directory Opus as my file manager and when I first started to use Linux full time that was the program I missed the most. Then... then I found Konqueror. Life's been good ever since. From that point it was a slow conversion to KDE as a whole.
I'm very happy with it. Koffice included. I'm very much looking forward to SVG support in the next version as well as a few other little bits I've read up on.
Good job guys!
And just a clarification, I like Gnome. I just like KDE better and you know what's cool? I'm not longer stuck between these two choices:
Windows DE or Windows DE.
You can do the same with GNOME, without touching GConf. For some more advanced tweakage, you will need to use GConf, which is pretty easy(not near as painful as windows's regedit).
Likewise, cutting off your hand is not as painful as disembowling yourself, but I would still rather just eat breakfast. Hence the reason I avoid such crap.
As for integration, KDE's "make other apps use KDE colors" hack is disgusting. If you want "integration," -- if by integration you mean widgets that look the same -- use Geramik, Bluecurve, or Mandrake's whatever-it's-called.
I really don't think looking identical is what is needed for integration. As an example, WinAmp integrates excellently with Windows.
Yes, KDE is pretty configurable -- if by configurable you mean you can change colors, fonts, and keybindings.
I'm guessing he means as in 'every option on the system'. Not that it's that far, but Appearance and Desktop are only the first two minor sections. So, we have panel functionality, backgrounds, colors, themes, feedback, desktops, window behavior, and all that stuff there. Then there's desktop sharing, e-mail functionality, LAN browsing/chatting, web browsing (including all its subsections), personal information, file manager functionality, mime-types functionality, spell-checking, session management, X display, keyboards and mice, printers, sound playback, system notification, boot manager configuration, date/time, font management, linux kernel setup, login management, default paths for many basic locations, cryptography, password feedback, accesibility, reqion settings, and about a dozen other things. And, yes, all of those things are actually configurable by KDE. That isn't just colors, fonts, and keybindings. Actually, I never mentioned keybindings. You can also configure keybindings.
5) Its development framework rocks. Take a good look at kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt and see why KDE is a programmer's dream. Modern c++, wonderful IDE, powerful command line scripting. Gnome gives you obsolete c, with a bunch of kludge libraries such as glib, Orbit, bonobo to hack together a application.
GNOME has C++ bindings for everything you need.
I'm not a programmer very often, but how do 'C++ bindings' equate to 'kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt' seeing as those do have C++ bindings. Not saying the parent wasn't wrong with that 'Gnome gives you obsolete c' line, but I don't think you exactly refuted his point, either.
Fucking kids...
First, please don't fuck kids.
Second, just because the parent post was rude in several places doesn't mean you need to be derogatory. It just sounds bad, reducing you to their level. And, yes, the original post was too harsh in its responses, but it did have much accuracy in it.
It stands for "Kommunist". From the 3.2 CVS changelog :
- Replaced the gears with a scythe
- Changed mascot name from Konqi to Kommie
- Changed default colour scheme to red.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!